When talking of “tempering” an object and, concretely, a vehicle body here, this refers to bringing about a particular temperature of the object which it does not have initially. This can be an increase in temperature or a reduction in temperature. The term “tempered fluid” refers to a fluid which has the temperature required to temper the object.
An incidence of tempering, namely heating, vehicle bodies which is common in the automotive industry is the procedure of drying the coating of a vehicle body, which can refer, for example, to a paint or an adhesive or the like. The description below of the invention uses the example of such a dryer.
When talking of “drying” here, this refers to all procedures in which the coating of the vehicle body, in particular a paint, can be hardened, be this simply by expelling solvents or by cross-linking the coating substance.
Devices of the type mentioned at the outset, which are constructed as dryers, conventionally have a tempering device which is used to heat the vehicle body to a desired temperature. To this end, air nozzles apply tempered air evenly to the vehicle body from the side.
As a result of the base current, the heat carried by the air is conducted to the vehicle body and introduced there into the vehicle body. Effective temperature transfer of the hot air or, in general terms, the tempered fluid into the vehicle body—or, in the case of the cooling procedure, from the object into the fluid—requires good thermal convection via the air guided through the tempering tunnel.
In a dryer, air whereof the temperature is tempered to always be as high as possible is therefore conducted to the vehicle bodies and, to this end, a correspondingly high volume of air is guided through the tempering tunnel. However, this is relatively energy- and resource-consuming.